News

This Friday 9th March we’re proud to join forces with businesses across Cumbria as we celebrate the second Cumbria Family Business Awards. The county’s family firms will battle it out in 11 categories, with the winners from each then competing for the coveted ‘Outstanding Family Business of the Year.’ With nearly 90% of businesses in Cumbria being family run, and with Armstrong Watson’s 150 years of experience advising and supporting family firms, we are delighted to see the awards return for a second year and repeat our role as a main sponsor of the event.

‘Former ministers warn over £500m dormant pensions grab’ was one of the standout financial headlines of the last couple of weeks, with former Pensions Ministers Baroness Altmann and Sir Steve Webb highlighting the Government’s proposal to donate dormant pension funds to charity.

This isn’t a new concept. Currently there is a scheme that releases bank and building society savings to good causes if the accounts have been untouched for 15 years. However this new proposal would expand the scheme to dormant pension and insurance assets.

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (‘the GDPR’) comes into effect on 25 May 2018 with the ICO’s enforcement powers to include powers to ban or suspend data processing, potentially at great cost and inconvenience.

The ICO will have the power to issue increased fines of up £17 million or 4% of global turnover, whichever is the higher. Currently, fines are capped at £500,000.

What are the most common methods used to reduce a tax liability? Find out what factors you need to consider before taking action. The common solution to reduce taxable profits and therefore your tax liability is to buy some machinery that will qualify for full relief in the year of purchase (expenditure covered by the Annual Investment Allowance) so that the taxable profit is much lower than the accounting profit made - generally the higher the cost, the more tax relief you will get.

Losing a loved one is a difficult enough thing to come to terms with, but if you add in the complication of the financial status quo being disrupted, the grief is compounded. Most people want to know that their loved ones are taken care of should they die, but how many have made sure that this is the case?

Car manufacturers are always trying to convince us of the merits of their newest innovations and the most up to date versions of their cars. There is a lot of news about the impact of technology on the cars we drive; from in car entertainment systems, sat-navs, automation and electronic power all informing us about the cars we will have in the next 5 – 10 years.

HM Revenue & Customs’ figures suggest that there are almost 1 million company cars in the UK. The taxation of company cars raises significant revenue for the Government. What will the future company car be like?

Our new hospitality occupancy benchmarking report for hotels based in the North of England and Scotland has recently been released.

Our report focuses on the trends in six distinct regions across the North, Scotland, Carlisle, The Lake District, The North East, Leeds & Bradford and Harrogate & York. This allows you to focus on regional trends applicable to your business alongside wider movements affecting the industry as a whole. As our report makes clear, the UK hospitality industry continues to face a time of uncertainty, but also of great opportunity.

When it comes to fake news and HMRC, one thing is a definite; HMRC will always strive to close the “tax gap” by identifying practices for evasion. There is often confusion around evasion and avoidance, which in any world involving taxes is a grey area. In my opinion evasion is where tax is due, or regulations exist that people ignore or hide under the radar. This is very different to avoidance, which lets face it, if someone said to you if you do X you will pay more tax than if you do Y; both pieces of advice being legal you are most likely to choose Y! Now I am not a tax expert, I leav

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